This one was pretty easy to name, sticking with my software development naming scheme. "Power Cycle" is just a hard reboot, where you completely shut down first. If you're having serious problems, especially network related, usually you want to power cycle instead of just restarting.
Anyway, the idea for the song is that people get entrenched in ways of thinking, and just stick with them, even if they don't make sense. People try to make sense of it and still trudge along until something big comes along to actually shake things up (like the current race protests in America). To reflect this, the loose melody is initially kind of snipped together and shared across multiple instruments. Also parts of the old melody still try to hang on in each new key, even though it doesn't really fit. The tension keeps building until it all falls apart. The song then reboots itself, and goes back to the original theme, but this time with a few basic changes. For example, the first intro theme uses closed chords (a big no-no for string voicings).
The "rebooted" theme uses open chords, and the idea is that everything gets better from there. A violin melody develops, then other instruments come in. There are hints of epic music, going with what Mister Fox said about how films used to use Big Beat, but now use big Taiko drums instead (sort of another type of reboot). It then ends with the Eventide "crystals" type effect triggered off of one of the violins (though I just used NI Guitar Rig to generate it, as I don't have the Eventide Harmonizer). This is supposed to represent that great things can happen if you just get your core beliefs and values in order. Re-reading this, I probably overthought things a bit :-)
The drums were really fun. I built them up in NI Drum Lab, tuning each sound, then messing with the MIDI to make it more customized, but basically it's the iconic "Amen, Brother" break from The Winstons, like a lot of Big Beat music uses. I then did a bit of reversing, short cut off samples, and resampling with IL Harmor.
Instruments:
- IL Harmor (synths and drum/vox resampling)
- Tone2 Saurus2 (all the chiptune-type sounds, and run through Guitar Rig for some of the guitar-type sounds)
- Impact Soundworks Shreddage II
- EastWest Symphonic Orchestra (strings, flutes, celeste, bassoons, some percussion)
- Embertone Joshua Bell Essential Violin
- SoundIron Hyperion Strings Elements (just for double bass)
- IK MODO Bass
- Novation Bass Station (VST)
- Arturia OB-Xa V
- AIR Hybrid 3 (just for risers)
- NI Strummed Acoustic
- Sampleso Floppytron
- NI Drum Lab
- NI Battery 4- EastWest Storm Drum 2
- Spoken words - me
- Intro sample - my daughter banging on the counter
, run through lots of effects
Effects:
- Polyverse "I Wish" (for glitch sounds)
- Izotope Neutron 2
- Izotope Nectar 3
- Soundtoys PanMan
- Polyverse Wider
- NI Guitar Rig 5
- NI Raum
- Valhalla Room reverb
- Bark of Dog subsynth (just on double bass parts)
Post:
- Soundtheory Gullfoss
- Izotope Ozone 8 Standard
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